Protests in Germany against ship carrying nuclear waste from the UK

A ship containing radioactive nuclear waste docked at the German port of Nordenham on early Tuesday morning (April 1), provoking protests by anti-nuclear activists. The nuclear waste is left over from the reprocessing of fuel elements from decommissioned German nuclear power plants at the Sellafield site in the United Kingdom. Though Germany abandoned nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima accident, it still faces the question of treating and storing the radioactive waste of its decommissioned plants, recurring to the services of the Sellafield site. After being shipped from the English port of Barrow-in-Furness, the waste will be transported in dry casks to an interim storage facility in Bavaria. The process is known in Germany as CASTOR, an acronym for “cask for storage and transport of radioactive material.”
The arrival of the ship in Nordenham has sparked several protests, with vigils and demonstrations taking place also in Bremen and Gottingen. At present, the radioactive waste is being transferred to a train in the Nordenham harbour, where tests will be carried out to ensure that radiation levels are within legal limits. After the tests, the train will leave for the storage facility in Bavaria through a route kept secret for security reasons. Seven more containers of nuclear waste should be transferred from Sellafield to Germany in the coming months.